LENTEN READINGS AND REFLECTIONS

DAY 18

Reading: John 11:47-16:33

Only in John do we get a record of the Lord's words to his disciples at the Last Supper. The other gospels give us the bare bones (bare but glorious all the same), the words of institution: “This is my body…this my the blood of the New Covenant…”

But in John we get the last words of promise and teaching that Jesus leaves his friends before his arrest, trial, suffering and death the next day.

He makes several remarkable promises. Chief among them is his promise that he will not leave his followers as “orphans”; that he will send the Holy Spirit.

Until this time, God has been present with the disciples face to face in the Person of the Son. The disciples do not yet fully understand this truth. They have yet to grasp the full weight of the fact that God has been personally with them.

Sometimes as we read the gospels we long for the experience of the disciples. We sometimes feel deprived and somewhat starved for the lack of seeing, touching, hearing, speaking with and laughing with our God in Christ. God has been with them.

But while God has been with them up to this point, God has not been in them.

That is the promise of the Holy Spirit. Jesus tells his disciples that he must leave, to go back to the Father, but that after he physically ascends to Heaven he will then be able to be with them in an entirely new way. He will live in their hearts through the Spirit whom he will send.

The Holy Spirit is God in the same way that Jesus is God. But the Holy Spirit makes it possible for God to set up his dwelling place in human hearts.

In that sense, despite our desires to see Jesus with our eyes, you and I can know Jesus now through the Holy Spirit on a far more intimate and personal level than the disciples knew him as lived and ministered with him during the three years of his earthly ministry.

At the last supper Jesus tells his disciples that they have become far more than servants. He has shared himself with them. He has shared the Father with them. They have become friends. That friendship will, he promises, be taken to the deepest level possible through the Spirit.

Through the Holy Spirit God will become their constant companion.

Did you know that? If you are in Christ, if you have come to faith and surrendered your heart to Jesus, God is your ever present companion.

You no longer experience life alone. In whatever you see and feel and think and say and do, God is with you. That is not true for everyone. That is only true for we who believe. That is only true for we who by the grace of God have become followers of Christ.

God has become your ever-present friend.

And yet how often this gift of divine friendship remains a gift unopened. As we go through the regular ups and downs of the day, the stresses and the joys, how wonderful, how much more rich, these experiences might be if we would but share them with our Friend.

This week remember that God resides in your heart. Speak to him quietly as your day goes by. Share your thoughts with him. Express your frustration, happiness, and pain. Practice the presence of God in all things.

You are, after all, not an orphan. You are the friend of God.

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